Reality check: Swedish tanks

Author: sp15

This short article will be purely dedicated to comparing the in-game Swedish tanks with reality, in essence I will be expanding upon my previous article “The lies about the Swedish heavies” where I went trough the faults of the top tiers in the heavy tank line. Going by the logic that its better to show you rather than tell you I will simply provide the relevant data below, if you want a more in debt look at these tanks you can check out my last article here.

Armor schemes

Emil II

There are faulty engines for the TD’s as well like the Ford 391 on the ikv 103 which is 175hp in the game but 199hp in real life but most of the engine problems in the TD branch came from removed engines rather than from unhistorical ones. But while we are on the topic of the “TD” branch I would like to recommend this article by Renhanxue on why the Strv 103 was not a tank destroyer: http://tanks.mod16.org/2016/08/19/strid … destroyer/

I have to agree with you there Sniper, might be why they are making a historically accurate Tiger II premium at tier 7 so they have free rain to buff the tier II at tier 8 without harming historical accuracy too severly. Personally I like to think in habits and the germans had a habit of hanging spare track links on anything that needed more armor like the Pz IV chasis’s so what if tracks were hung onto the hull like on the turret of the Tiger II or even in the style of the Pz S.35. Otherwise there are still soft stats like ground resistance, gun handling, and rof that can be tweaked. Not sure if it’s a good idea but it might be an option over a flat fantasy buff.

Personally I would be in favor of a complete rework of the german heavy line.
Like moving the tiger and tiger2 down a tier. Vk 36 at tier 5 isn’t to bad. Just make it real slow?
Don’t know what fits at tier 8 then? A fake tiger3? Even though the Lowe is a tiger replacement

I’ve heard a lot of talk about moving the tiger and tiger 2 down a tier as well but that really messes up the match up between the Tiger, IS, and T29, granted most tier 7’s were designed with killing the Tiger in mind while the Tiger was supposed to kill KV-1’s so there’s that going for the moving down a tier argument.

I will miss the Vk 36.01 H at tier VI, it’s one of if not the quickest heavy tank at tier VI and still has enough armor to take a KV-2 or O-I derp on the chin unlike an ARL with its paper turret, M6 with its fragile side, or a KV-85 with only 75mm on the front. The thing is the Vk 30.01 at tier V is fine, it has a tier VII gun at tier V just for kicks.

And yeah, that’s a common problem with moving the Tiger II, you don’t have a replacement. The Tiger 3 is technically a Lowe and after that is the Maus but a Tiger 3 can also be interpreted as an E75. All of which are already in the game and the supertest tier 8 heavies are better for the Maus line rather than the E100 line. Best you can get is modifying a Tiger II with armor add ons because it already has the E75’s 105mm historical gun and you can’t make the Tiger II faster without calling it a Panther II.

More like Swedish branch with historical values would be more balanced and would force players to try to utilize their gun depresion to achieve the most effective armor.

The buffed the armour to impenetrable levels on the Kranvagn turret for no reason and then “balanced” them by giving them mediocre mobility and horrible dpm.

Not saying the Swedish shouldnt happen more that it should be delayed to make the tanks historically accurate and more balanced.

And I understand his persistance on the matter, SP15 did a hell of a lot of research on the swedish tanks for WG just to have them ignore the historical values. Honestly if it were me I would be pissed off

Oh, im not naive enough to think this will change anything. Im just informing people that is all.
I dont agree with how WG handled these tanks so i will simply point out some of the things they did wrong.

And no i dont think 100% historical accuracy is a good thing either a lot of the time but the engine and armor problems could have been solved by soft stat instead, and i personally think that would have been the better way to go about things. And remember you dont have to read these articles if you dont want to.

“I dont agree with how WG handled these tanks so i will simply point out some of the things they did wrong.”

And people will forget in a month and the community will become more toxic by everyone blaming each other. I don’t think this approach of talking about devs instead of talking “to” devs – especially when you have the means and contacts to – is a good thing.

Nya-chan Production, i’m just curious. What does your scoff “Should we buy you a beer? Would you prefer Sweden branch not to happen?” achieve? Isn’t it something that people will forget in even less than a month? Isn’t it an example of toxic community that you speak of?

Well consider that nearly every gun that Strv 103 will go against can overmatch the armor except for the 105mm on medium tanks… i think its more to make people reaslise that despite it being classed as a TD you should play it as a MT…

You dont play the T30 heavy tank as a TD because its classed as a TD do you?

I was actually very releaved to find that the Strv 103 played pretty much like a medium tank after the buffs to the seige mode transition times and top speed. Still that mode should have been replaced by an automatic switch between the modes that would happen automaticly at a certain speed. I know that they did test such a system.

Not much of a point complaining about the tank class, because we all know they’re BS. The individual tank plays according to itself rather than the pre set template. Object 416? M3 Lee? Löwe? Tortoise? The list of these weirdos that are all but fit to their classification marches on.

And I forgot to add, WG allegedly knows this and is in the process of trashing the old system and dividing it into breakthrough tanks ladidadida. Whether that’ll happen is up to WG, but it’s usually swimming in a a strong upstream

It certainly would make the 103B unique if it were labeled as a medium instead of a TD but the bigger problem is that there aren’t enough tank classes to give enough of a sense of what is what. In it’s current release of the S-Tank it is probably better labeled as a TD because it doesn’t have the armor to not camp at the back and the .25 accuracy and 300mm pen are very TD like. I suppose if the tank traded its accuracy and penetration to play a greater variety of roles, it could very well be classified as a medium. Really, anything can destroy tanks so it is more of a label to encourage camping and it is up to your opinion whether you think the game needs more camping or not.

Well, the french heavies are still more lightly armored so I don’t think it would stop the creation of a swedish heavy line. I suppose the two lines would be more similar without messing with soft stats more? That said, adding external tracks on the hull isn’t a bad way to get effective armor values up with historical armor. Design drawings never show military improvisation. I suppose most of this concern comes from the Czech line being more historically accurate so the case can be made that wargaming are being negligible with the info they get from their historians.

As someone that has gone through a lot of the research towards the EMIL tank project I’m gonna say that historical values would have made for better balanced tanks and can understand the frustration towards WG so blatantly ignoring such clearly documented historical values

I mean at that point you just sound like that teammate who pings the minimap non-stop after dying because his team didnt follow him where he wanted even tho he wanted to go somewhere nobody would go in the first place.
>report for spam, learn to play
>stop making more and more articles to say the same thing : “WG no do my tenks historicaly nao i be mad”, you should have known how it would end, we’re talking about WoT, not about a simulator based on historical facts.

If the tanks had their historical armors they would be useless because instantly penned by gold ammo, and because their gun stats would need to be balanced around their “superior armor” we’d end up with another bunch of heavies with no actual strong points.
Here at least they have turret armor, and even then the tanks are not worth getting simply because their guns are terrible for their tier. If they had their historical armor they’s just be slightly better AMX50B, and because 50B would be too far behind they’d nerf it anyway and in both cases KRV ends up being the worst out of the three autoloading tier X HTs ; turret armor isnt enough when your hull and gun are bad, you cant stay hulldown at all times especialy when arty is in play.
As for the TDs being TDs instead of MTs : well first WoT doesnt have a “MBT” class, some MBTs would fit better as heavies while some other as mediums or lights.
And in WoT, a tank with big accuracy and camo but a fixed gun and which has to stay still at long ranges to be effective fits more to the idea of TD than MT. Just look at ELC AMX and OBJ 416/430-2 : they’re LTs and MTs but because of their powerful gun and not fully traversable turret players tend to use them more in a TD way and even refer to them as such. So a tank with no turret at all, dude at some point its just logic ; WG isnt making a history book, they’re making an arcade game, thus it has to be fun and intuitive for players whatever the consequences may be for historical accuracy. Make Strv a medium tank and you lose the intuitive part. Make KRV historical and you lose the fun part.

Get over it. WG wont suddenly change their minds (at least not before balance 2.0. Maybe they even plan on making them historical later but just needed to change them for now so they fit into the current game) because you keep posting articles about how they are not turning their arcade game into a simulator just because you spent time on that tree. So you’ll gain nothing doing so, and eventualy you’ll just annoy people over here.
It’s always good to have stuff to read on RSR especialy now that leaks are much slower than a year ago, but if I wanted to read people complaining about WG I could go on official forums for that.

You dont have to read these articles if you dont want to you know. And if you are asking for more traditional content from me i have had an article redy to go since a month ago but rita just have not gotten around to posting it.

I will probably be adding fuel to the fire, but SP15, trying to silence people like this is unethical. SpeedyCraft had some informative matters to comment and we can all understand from this his level of intelligence and his stance that other people complain more than him. I recommend you take SpeedyCraft as the stereotype of people that will disagree with this article and take the time to bash his skull in in a literative manner.

IDK…the tanks in game look remarkably like those in real life. To the point I’ve noticed some US armor the last few years and known which tank it was before going to look at the sign. Of course, those are tanks that have been there for decades that I never once thought about looking at either.

The game is so far from reality it’s fairly silly to be so concerned that the THICKNESS of some of the components are inaccurate. Worrying about mm of metal when they just used hitboxes for internals…

Let’s see the historical comparison of how long it takes to change a track…how accurate the historical minimaps were and how fast you could light enemies for an ally. I wonder how many tank battles were played tens of thousands of times on the same 1km square part of Europe. I also don’t think historically tanks were outlined with a red silhouette…I think they were in black and white back then, right? What was the name of the battle where it was french+germans+US+soviet+chinese+japanese+british vs. french+germans+US+soviet+chinese+japanese+british.

Okay, comedy aside, the reason wargaming has not worked harder to make the tanks historically accurate is because there are very few players that even heard of the tanks as being historically accurate. Public out cry is very powerful like when there was a back lash on the sale of emblems that would buff stats.

Premium ammunition is a problem for game balance and should not be used as an excuse for making historically accurate tanks. Honestly most premium ammunitions needed to be removed or rebalanced because quite often they are a flat upgrade over standard rounds and the choice provides no gameplay benefit, just load gold and that’s it.

Mind you, the historical armor is not impossible to use, it is still significantly better than the KRV’s T57 and AMX 50B counterparts (50% more armor on the turret at least), only historically, it is not so much noob friendly because the armor value on the flat is probably only 200mm effective, cry me a river. There are also ways to improve armor by historical means such as putting external tracks on top like the IS-3 or Pz IV.

As for the ELC AMX and Obj 416, those tanks could not traverse their turrets completely without being stationary and that is historically recommended assuming the tank is always in motion. Hopefully they too will get a siege mode so they made traverse their turrets completely but they are not valid arguments for your case as they do not signify exceptional historical imbalance statistically. Only mechanically which Rita is not arguing that the KRV should get a siege mode.

Finally, there are limitations with the game’s tank classifications, yes, but they serve more as a role encouragement. The problem with calling the S-Tank a TD is that players will camp in it, which is fine since they buffed the accuracy to .25 and gave it 300mm of pen without much armor. That said, if the armor functioned as intended and the vehicle traded its accuracy and penetration for more flexibillity then labeling it as a MT would be more appropriate as a player would be encouraged to play the tank differently.

This is not something to be so outraged about but most of your concerns do have some merit.

LOL balance 2.0…It has been coming for what? 3 years. Im sorry but they have been using this excuse not to change stupid shit for an eternity. That wont fly anymore. If somehting needs balance, then they need to do it now. All the “Balance 2.0” ideas from an entire 3 tests were scrapped..LOL

For the most part, the KRV has +240 mm effective turret armor on the flat and becomes impenetrable when using its gun depression. The KRV’s mobillity is also very similar to a AMX 50B with the 50B being marginally faster in a drag race. The KRV still has more gun depression so this will make the 50B more competitive (note more players own a T57 Heavy than a 50B) so the boost is well intentioned to also separate the 50B from the T57 which was always seen as a better autoloader because of the dpm difference. If anything, the KRV with its current armor and flexibillity on ridgelines alone will make it one of the strongerst heavy tanks at tier X.

That 225mm of armor currently is effective as 340mm on the flat and 460mm of armor at the full 12 degrees of gun depression. If it were 150mm historically thick, the tank actually need to use hills to make use of its armor.

My bad, confused the diagram, the tier X historically had 170mm on the turret which would probably be 225mm thick on the flat if I took the current tier 8 model as reference. Then those 170mm would quickly jump to 270-280mm thick on the turret at 12 degrees of gun depression. The slope would also be at 55 degrees which would hurt heat shells a great deal and so long as you are not fighting at close range, shell drop off will cause most tier X td’s 290mm pen to fall. Even APCR has less normalization than normal AP so don’t think for a moment most guns at tier X have a hope of getting through that turret.

As you can see on this document to the far right the effective armor of the krv turret is listed, its about 283mm thick, note the other effective thicknesses in that list too like the 270mm lower glacis. https://i0.wp.com/i.imgur.com/nrNf7Hm.jpg

I’d rather have armor immune to standard shells and some gold and a decent gun than completely broken armor and uncomfortable as fuck gun. 280 mm of effective, angled armor is way more than enough for a fire support tank. It was never intended to be a Maus. If you can’t work with that it’s not the tank’s fault.

Well that isnt really true, i mean out of the vehicles in the medium/Heavy line 5 vehicles saw service, 2 were prototypes, two were early versions of a tank leading up to one of the prototypes and the final one was never built in any form. That is hardly all paper.

Lets put it this way, without me the Swedish Tech tree would have literally have been impossible. It is only thanks to the efforts of me and Renhanxue over 3-4 years that the research neccesary for the Swedish tree to become a thing was possible. Without our research and involvement with helping WG find engine and gun options as well as previously unknown tanks the Swedish tree wouldnt have happened. Basically we did all the hard work for them and they just had to make the models and add the stats for each vehicle based on what we had already laid out.

when it comes to historical accuray, ofc it matters……
70%ish+ of tanks ingame are based on real tanks, and armoured after real life tanks.
its ”okay” when we dont know the exact mm of armour on prototype’s/papertanks, they can also be buffed/nerfed, cuz it wasnt that real: VK45B for example.

Kranvagn is also a prototype, there is more ”space for creativity” when it comes to performance ingame.

sounds a bit more weird if the ”average” m4 sherman was to get 5 inches of armour.

OP on hilly terrain, shit in a rush on flat ground. somewhat balanced out.
like spaghettimonster says: they had to make a different tier X heavy autoloader. enough of the clones.
though i am against the super turret, cuz that ruins shitloads of games, against em’ USA and USSR turrets from hell, hulldown, well entrenched, small chance of victory…..

maybe im just limited but i cant see how the historical KRV would be successful…they would need to tweek the hell out of the soft stats like laser aim time and such…

if the armor only works when your using 10-12 degrees then the tank would be like a Maus…good on 3-4 maps on everything alse it better to go whit the other 2 autoloaders…and even then if you get the maps pray there is no arty because autoloaders on the open are the easiest arty pray…just wait for him to start unloading and you know he wont move for the next 5-6sec…
they also made the maps much more Russian gun depression friendly…almost all the chock points require no or minimum depression…Live Oks water side is good…some spots on Stepps and Sand River…and then again on avrg a t10 game has 2-3 artys so…

if you give him a much better gun then the t57 becomes obsolete if you give him speed then the 50b is useless…if you just simply place him in the middle of the 2 you get a tank like the t10 Patton…its a ok tank but thats it and we all know how popular it is…

maybe there is a solution here to meet the historical “requirement” and make the tank effective in this meta…but just punting it like it is on the papers wouldnt do it…

Armor: the historical effective turret armor of the KRV on flat ground is around 290mm for most of the front, that is enough to give most tier 10’s trouble as it is, sure its not impenetrable like it is in game but it would still reach those levels when using even a Little of the gun depression. And remember the front hull armor of the ingame version is way lower than the real thing, so its not like the real tank has no armor as it is.

Arty: well this is just a problem with autoloaders in general, but id argue that without the fake turret armor WG could have given the KRV a shorter intershell reload and mobility closer to reality which would reduce this problem compared to what is in the game.

I Think ideally the KRV should have been like the first version added to the test server but with worse ground resistances so the french are faster and with its historical armor. I Think the impenetrable turret only caused the tank to be nerfed way too much and because of that lost its versatility. As it is right now the KRV is really a one trick pony which can only relly preform when hull down, and i Think it could have been so much more with the real mobility and armor intact.

i am on your side SP15 that if possible the history should matter but i dont think just punting the historical tank in the game would work…much more behind the scene smart tweeking would be needed…and i dont think the WG devs are up to that task…most of them have below 5k games played…probably played t10 tanks only on the test server where only gold flys around…

anyway time will tell…im on the RU server right now the update will come in a hour or so…will go for the heavy line first…2 weeks should be enough…50b is my favorite heavy so lets see how it stacks up…

SP15, you are right and thanks a lot for what you and Renhanxue did.
I, as a player of WoT am much more grateful to you than to any WG employee, because they never have the mind, heart and body to do shit right, to follow through something true to life. They always fuck up tanks in the most retarded of manners, leaving you with nothing but make believe.
They should have kept the historical values, no doubt about that, but instead they do the typical arcade bullshit in the name of ‘balance’ – ‘gaming political correctness’.
Keeping the historical values, as said before, would have lead to a specific kind of gameplay in which the level of skill of using slopes would have greatly rewarded the player. But now, we have a tank that has an almost impenetrable turret and anything else is lackluster about it. The hull of the tank is a bad joke, well, at least before they implement their overmatch mechanics, which they were so shit with that they couldn’t release just yet. The dpm is below the AMX50B… okay, but, the 3 second reload time between shots and the deadly long drum magazine reload is a great pain in the ass. This cannot hold a candle to the AMX 50B and people don’t mention shit about the most broken of tanks, the T57, which honestly needs some fucking nerfing or better: a removal from the game.. It is spot-on overpowered and can literally mow down everything it encounters (with some moderate friendly damage soakers involved). I hope that they will grow a mind at some time in their lifetime as a game developer and actually try to hold historical accuracy in high esteem, unlike Gaijin, which is actually trying.
At least the turretless branch stands apart!
Best of luck, everyone!
Waiting for Rising Storm 2: Vietnam and Day of Infamy to leave WoT to some well-deserved rest…

Isn’t the historical Emil 1 meant to have a pike-nose with the one we have in-game being the initial design?

Would have thought the Emil 1 would be at tier 8 with 500hp engine and the Emil (the one in-game now) would be a premium with the historical planned -14 deg gun depression and 550hp engine. Emil 1 would have better effective armour with the Emil having better mobility

“And people will forget in a month and the community will become more toxic by everyone blaming each other. I don’t think this approach of talking about devs instead of talking “to” devs – especially when you have the means and contacts to – is a good thing”